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My favorite gays aka Wolfstar, Good Shit
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Published:
2021-04-23
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2022-04-21
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We can be heroes, for ever and ever

Summary:

The story of the Marauders is a sad one, with betrayal turning their lives to ashes; we all know the tale. But what if someone had unmasked Peter Pettigrew just in time to prevent the events of Halloween 1981 from happening? Could James, Lily, Sirius and Remus find a happy ending if only that one night was erased from their stories?

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Non-canon compliment fic based off of atyd, so it contains parallels to MKB89's fic as well as some original characters from that same work. Events from Harry's life still somewhat take place towards the end, but with a few adjustments and some major changes (as in people don't die) AKA THIS IS AN ALL THE YOUNG DUDES FIX IT FIC from october 1981 = everybody lives <3

1981-1996

Notes:

First of all: fuck Joanne. Fuck transphobia, homophobia, racism, or any kind of bigotry.

I started writing this because some people from a discord server I'm in wanted to see a happy ending to our favorite characters, and I totally agree. I love ATYD and Harry Potter but I hate the way everyone I love ends up dead, so here I'm going to try to fix that. Thank you so much to the people who suggested and helped me come up with it!

Since this story follows the cannon of All the Young Dudes, by MsKingBean89, up until the events of Halloween 1981, it contains a lot of aspects from ATYD, such as some of MsKingBean89's original characters and some parallels and backstories from that fic.

English isn't my first language, so please correct me if I make any mistakes.

Also, let me know if there are any trigger warnings I'm forgetting to point out. I'm not the best at doing that, so I'm really sorry if I forget something.

Leave a comment to let me know your thoughts on the fic and give kudos if you enjoyed it.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Padfoot

Chapter Text

Sirius Black was staring at the door Remus had vanished through, almost three weeks ago. They hadn’t said I love you or kissed each other goodbye the way they used to. Sirius sighed and buried his face in his hands, a pang of guilt growing inside his chest. He didn’t know for how much longer he could hold his tongue or keep on pretending nothing had changed but, for now, he couldn’t risk saying anything. If he was wrong, he’d hurt Remus by letting him know about his doubts over his loyalty. And if his suspicions were correct, even in the slightest, he’d rather keep Remus close, where he could keep an eye on him rather than have him disappear Merlin knows where to. Either way, it was too risky. It was James, Lily, and Harry's lives that were on the line, and Sirius wasn’t going to risk his family, even if that meant having to lie to the man he loved.

When Remus was home, Sirius would spend his time nose deep into Order businesses, researching, studying, or just pretending to be reading some important papers, both to keep his mind busy and to prevent openings for any kind of conversation. When Remus was gone, Sirius would stare into the walls and think. He would turn over the last year in his head, sometimes the last decade, trying to put the puzzle together. He’d think about every ambush the Order had fallen into, about every time the Death Eaters seemed to be one step ahead of them, and about all the lives they’d lost in those encounters. He also thought back to their years at Hogwarts, though that was always more painful to do. Looking for clues of treason within the best years of their lives felt almost as if Sirius himself was the one betraying his friends, so he avoided it most times. But today he couldn’t help it.

It was Halloween, which reminded him of Hogwarts’ feasts and Gryffindor parties. He’d been lost inside his own head almost all day, not managing to get anything done. He missed having his friends around, getting pissed, and being simply happy. He missed having the other boys near to cheer him up, and having Moony hug him at nights when he couldn’t sleep. Now, even when Remus was home, the spaces between them were getting so deep that they could never quite reach each other. He missed curling up inside of his embrace, feeling protected and loved. He missed a time when he’d trust Remus with every bit of who he was; it was so easy, it felt so safe. And though Remus was never so quick to pour out his heart to Sirius, they still managed to get the important stuff out in the open, at least between the two of them. Then he thought about every single secret Remus had kept from him, and how he’d always been a natural liar.

Back when they were young and safe, he’d found Remus’ secrets a cool mystery he’d be always eager to unpack; now, all of those secrets seemed to weigh as proof of how good at deceiving the other man could be when he put his mind to it. He also thought about every time Remus was a little too passionate about the murderous packs of werewolves he’d infiltrated. Not that Sirius had any sort of prejudice towards werewolves (he had been best friends with one over half of his life, after all), it’s just that Remus seemed to be getting too attached to the packs that were actively out to serve Voldemort and kill people. At least that’s what Sirius kept telling himself in order to justify his mistrust.

But wanting to keep an eye on Remus wasn’t the only reason why Sirius wouldn’t verbalize his suspicions to anyone. Saying it out loud made it all too real to be bearable, and brought the risk of losing his Moony a hundred steps closer to reality. His Moony…Yes, Sirius thought, it seems not even all of his suspicions could make that feeling go away. He still loved his Moony with every bone under his skin, and he would keep him as close as he dared to, for as long as he could; he just couldn’t let go.

After hours of dwelling on his own doubts, he’d arrived at the same conclusion as he always did: he didn’t know. There was a spy among the Order of the Phoenix; Remus Lupin had enough reasons to be displeased with Dumbledore and was good enough with secrets. But, still, putting his friends in danger? Sirius couldn’t see how that made sense. Remus loved his friends. Remus loved him. Sirius didn’t doubt that but, at the same time, he no longer thought love was enough.

Once upon a time, Sirius Black had believed love was all that mattered. He had found love in the three boys he’d met when he was just eleven years old. When he was 16, he had left a house where he had never felt at home and had been welcomed into the Potters as if he’d been their own child; the love he felt from Effie and Monty Potter, and James, above anyone else, made him feel like nothing could ever drag him down. But love wasn’t enough in war. It didn’t save lives and it couldn’t keep people from going into the wrong ways. More often than he’d expected, Sirius had lost people he’d cared about to either death or darkness. Or both. At that, his little brother came to mind, but Sirius quickly tried brushing over his memory. Thinking about Regulus would always make his insides twist into a million knots.

For a very long time, Sirius tortured himself, trying to pin down the moment he’d lost Regulus to their parents. He couldn’t blame his own running from home, James would point out, because Regulus was messing with the dark arts way before that. Maybe it had been the day Sirius had been sorted into Gryffindor, or the first time he’d refused going home on Christmas break to spend it with the Potters. Sometimes, Sirius thought he’d never actually had Regulus in the first place; he’d never been his to lose. So, he just mourned him. Not the death eater who’d died for desertion, but the little boy who’d creep into his big brother’s bed in the middle of the night after having had a nightmare.

Sirius had been deep inside his thoughts for hours now, his reasoning of things getting him absolutely nowhere. He still didn’t trust Remus the way he once did, and he still didn’t know if there was anything he could have done differently in order to save his brother from himself. So, he resigned from trying to find reasons and decided it was time he made his weekly check-up on Peter, who’d been hiding at a safe house ever since he’d became James and Lily’s secret-keeper. He got up and went over to the kitchen, to have one last cup of tea before leaving.

As soon as he reached the kettle, though, he heard a sharp crack out in the street and stopped on his heels, waiting. Someone had apparated. Maybe it was Remus coming back sooner from the pack but at this time of the day that didn’t seem very likely. James, Lily and Peter were all in hiding and anyone else from the Order showing up unannounced could not be the bearer of good news. A knock sounded on the door and Sirius ran to it, not sure if he had the guts to answer.

“Who is it?” He had his hand on the knob but remembered Moody’s tireless speeches for them to be always alert.

“Sirius? It’s Mary! Hurry up, I need to talk!” Her voice was strange, a bit shook and high-pitched, but it was hers. Sirius was met with such a shock by having Mary show up he opened the door without even asking her a question. No one had heard from Mary since the McKinnons, but here she was, standing at his front door. Sirius stared at her for a second before returning to the reality of the war.

“What… ehh… Why were you mad at me at the beginning of sixth year?” He asked, not sure if the question sounded as stupid to her as it did to him.

“Because you’d forgotten my birthday. We were going to meet at Diagon Alley, but you never showed up.” She answered with a shadow of a smile passing through her face, as if she was remembering the terrible boyfriend Sirius had been to her, and how life was easier when that had been their most pressing concern.

“Come in, MacDonald.” He stepped aside, lowering his wand and walking her into his living room. “What’s wrong? No one’s heard from you in months and… you seem really shaken.”

“That’s because I am.” Her eyes were flying all over the place, not quite able to meet Sirius’. “Look, I know I disappeared, I just… couldn’t take it anymore.”

“S’all right, we figured. But what happened? You said it was urgent?”

“It is. You’re alone.” She observed. “Okay. I was scared I might not find any of you home, and I had no one else I trusted to go to.”

“Trusted with what, Mary?”

She took a deep breath and finally met his eyes, before saying in a very low voice. “Sirius, I… I think I know who the spy is.”

“What?” He felt his heart skip a beat, not sure if he wanted to stay and listen or run away and never know for sure. He’d been looking for that exact information for over a year now, living in torture of just imagining all different scenarios, but now he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted the answer.

“Listen, I can always be wrong, alright? You can’t freak out and you’ve got to listen to me all the way through, got it?”

He just nodded, not sure what’d come out if he tried to come up with words to say.

She walked him to the sofa, sitting both of them down, probably for stability. When she started talking, it was in a flow that got Sirius startled, trying to follow her line of thinking. Maybe if she stopped to breathe, he thought, she wouldn’t find the strength to start again.

“After Marlene… after it all went down, I spent weeks locked inside my bedroom reliving the last times I’d seen her in my head. What had I missed? Could I have helped her? You see, she was on to something, that much I knew. She wouldn’t tell me what it was, kept saying it was nothing, but I knew her and something was up. D’you remember that the day it happened, I was supposed to meet her for lunch? She’d been the one to arrange it between us; two days before she’d said she really needed to talk to me, but wouldn’t tell me why, only that it had to be in person. So, after she died, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that it hadn’t been just a random death eater attack on Order members. There was something more to it, something Marlene knew and they wanted erased. So, I went digging. The house is still under their family name, I guess it must have gone to some relative, but no one has shown up to claim it yet. I went over and broke in."

“You what?”

“C’mon, that’s not important,” she said, irritated at the interruption. “I spent days there, Sirius, days. I went over every corner of that house, turned Marl’s bedroom upside down. I still don’t know where I got the strength to walk in there, but I did. It was a fucking nightmare but the longer I spent there, the more I knew there had to be something, somewhere.”

“And what did you find?”

“Well, nothing at first. It all seemed boringly normal, nothing out of the ordinary. I was almost giving up, to be honest. While I was tidying some of the mess I’d made, I found some parchment with some random notes on it. It didn’t make a lot of sense at first, but it was clearly about the whole spy thing. There were several notes on pointing to things to look after in a double agent, physical aspects like loss of weight, constant nervousness, and, of course, reason. It looked like Marlene had been doing some serious research on it. But there were no names, and I couldn’t think of anyone with a reason to betray the cause. The notes were also talking about the possible spy being someone who’d avoid being in direct conflict and who’d try to keep a low profile, even within the Order. I’m not quite sure what Marlene’s reasoning was over all of it, but it made sense. There was a little side note that made absolutely no sense to me, some exclamation points on it.

“Ok, so she probably was killed off because she was nosing into whoever the spy is, I get that,” Sirius was getting irritated with all the explanation; he wanted a direct answer. “But did she actually manage to find out?”

“Hold on, Black, I’m getting there.” Mary snapped at him, “As I was saying, I needed to investigate more, so I went through her notes and I made my own, I looked into every single Order member and looked for patterns of who was and who wasn’t present during meetings and during all those ambushes. There are only 3 people who were lucky enough to never be on duty when those happened. I stared at their names for weeks, trying to see if any of them would have any reason or would show any extra evidence pointing to them being responsible. Then I started going over everything I knew about those people, and that’s when it hit me… that one note in Marlene’s parchment that didn’t seem to make any sense, Sirius… there was this one word and, at first, I thought it was just an expression she used to describe the mole in the order… but now it makes so much sense.”

“Mary, in Godric’s name, can you get to whatever point you're trying to make already?” Sirius cut her, desperate.

Mary swallowed hard but held his gaze.

“I remembered how you lads would disappear with Remus during the full moons. You see, I knew you were with him, I just didn’t know how. Then in seventh year, at some point, I saw this huge black dog rooming through the grounds, and I just knew. I figured back then all of you must be something, but I thought it best not to ask since it was clearly not a very legal affair,” she raised one eyebrow with that. “But, now… Sirius, the word she had written down was ‘rat’”. She whispered the last word as if she almost couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud.

Sirius froze, not entirely sure he could grasp what she was saying. But as the seconds of silence turned into minutes, where Sirius couldn’t find the words to speak and Mary wouldn’t dare say anymore, his mind raced. It raced through every time Wormtail had been absent from missions he should have participated on, giving some work excuse, and every time he’d seemed way too interested in details he shouldn’t truly care about. It raced to McGonagall, during third year, explaining how one couldn’t choose their animagus form, because it was a reflection of who they were, same as their patronus. He looked back on the last few times he’d spoken to Peter, when the boy had seemed way too eager to take on the role of secret-keeper and agreed it was a good idea not to tell Remus about the switch, because the fewer people who knew about it, the better.

When Sirius finally spoke again, his voice still struggling to come out, he could feel his blood boiling in his veins as the last piece of the puzzle fell into place.

“Wormtail. Are you sure?” He asked, though Sirius was sure enough, himself.

Mary just nodded; sadness in her eyes. “I finally understood his nickname, and it just clicked for me. Whoever was passing intel to the death eaters was someone with more information than just what was spoken at meetings and briefings. It was someone who not simply was a part of the Order, but had enough friends inside to get details from different missions. Peter was one of the only three people who had never been unlucky enough to be in real peril of death. Out of those three, he was the only one with other Order members who I knew would trust him with their lives.”

Sirius felt the world falling from under his feet. Trust him with their lives. “And we did, Mary,” he whispered.

“What?”

“Trust him with our lives. Quite literally.” Sirius was already getting up, fetching his wand from the living room table. “Accio bike keys” he shouted, as he grabbed his leather jacket from its hanging by the door.

“Sirius, wait. Where are you going?” Mary got up too, looking alarmed.

“When James and Lily went into hiding, they decided to use the Fidelius Charm to keep them safe. I was going to be the secret-keeper, but we switched to Peter last minute, hoping it would serve the death eaters as a decoy.” He explained as he stumbled into the kitchen to look for something to leave a note to Remus, in case he came back earlier.

“Wait,” Mary was following him there “do you mean to tell me the one person with the ability to give the Potters to You-know-who is the spy?

“Yes,” Sirius said shortly, as he scribbled through a piece of paper with a muggle pen he’d found in the kitchen drawer.

Moony, if I’m not home when you get back, go to Dumbledore and ask for help. Whatever you do, don’t trust Wormtail. Tell Dumbledore he’s James’ secret-keeper. We switched. I’ll explain when I can. He’s also the spy. Marlene figured it out, her and Mary. I’m going to warn James and Lily. Be safe.

He stopped writing, thinking that should do it for now and he would explain it all later. He stared at the message one last time, before finishing it.

I love you.

Padfoot.

Those last four words felt to Sirius like a cry for help and forgiveness. He hated himself more than he’d ever hated anything before. The relief he was feeling from understanding Remus had never betrayed them was tainted with regret and self-loathe for having ever considered it. Besides, having one friend betray you instead of another doesn’t exactly provide you with a happy ending.

Right now, he needed to get to James as fast as he could. He turned to Mary.

“I’m not sure how it’ll work for you with the house being under the charm. I can find them because I had Peter tell me the secret before he himself went into hiding.”

“Is Peter under any kind of spell?”

“No, he’s just at a safe house, about 20 minutes away from the Potters’, but there’s no Fidelius on that.”

“Then I’ll go to him.” She said firmly.

“Are you mad? You’re not facing him alone.” Sirius stared at her.

“You think I’m scared of Peter?”

“MacDonald, didn’t you just spend an hour telling me he’s a fucking death eater? And besides, I’d like to beat the living shit out of the fucking bastard, myself.” Sirius was boiling with anger. Peter had been his brother since they were eleven years old, and just the thought of him being the one to deliver James to Voldemort made him feel sick.

“He killed Marlene, Black!” Mary spat on his face. “Marlene! She helped him with his homework, she played chess and got drunk with him! She tended to his wounds whenever his clumsy arse would mess up some potion or spell or fall off his bloody broom! And he killed her.” She started crying for the first time that night. Looking in hindsight, it amazed Sirius how neither of them had fallen apart yet. He reached out and hugged her tight, trying to get her body to stop shaking. Tears started filling up his own eyes, but he blinked them away. He needed to get to James, and he needed a clear mind for that.

When he finally let go of her, he grabbed another piece of paper and started writing again.

“Alright, listen to me. This is the address. Go there and keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn’t leave. Don’t approach him, Mary, I mean it. Wait for me, please. I’ll get James, Lily and Harry somewhere safe and then I’ll come back to join you. And we’ll get the little rat together, d’you hear me? If he tries to leave or run away, you can attack, but other than that, just keep an eye on him.

She grabbed the paper he handed to her and nodded, apparently settling for sharing Peter’s blood with Sirius.

“Let’s go on my bike. From the Potters' cottage, it’s only a 20-minute walk to Peter’s. It’s better if he doesn’t hear anyone apparating nearby.”

She agreed and they left the flat, going over to Sirius’ garage. He’d left his note for Remus floating in the air, right above the couch, so as to be seen as soon as Moony walked into the living room. He wished he could just send him a message via Patronus, but that might not be very well received by the pack he was staying with, so he just hoped Remus would come back home soon.

Getting to the garage with that thought still in mind, he had another idea.

Expecto Patronum.” He flicked his wand and a silver dog shot out of it. He whispered to it a similar message to the one he had left Remus, just enough details to get them aware of the danger. They couldn’t use their communication mirrors, since Sirius had been holding on to both of them ever since James and Lily had gone into hiding. They’d agreed that it’d be safer to cut down the number of ways available for reaching the Potters. Now, Sirius hoped his Patronus would get through the Fidelius Charm.

“Find Prongs,” he commanded to the dog before it went off into the night.

Sirius got on his bike, turned it on, and motioned for Mary to climb behind him. They shot into the night, with Sirius taking it straight off the ground, not even caring if there were any muggles paying attention. He cut through the cold air, remembering he hadn’t spoken to James in at least a couple of weeks. Sirius only hoped it wasn’t too late.